Identifying and Advocating Best Practices in the Criminal Justice System. A Texas-Centric Examination of Current Conditions, Reform Initiatives, and Emerging Issues with a Special Emphasis on Capital Punishment.

The O'Connell/Holland 'affair' was no small lapse in morals. The affair itself was merely tawdry, but the lies and deceit that followed were serious violations of ethics and cast grave doubt on the ability of the Collin County Criminal Justice system to actually dispense justice.

Their affair casts doubt, not only on the conviction of Charles Dean Hood, but on unnumbered defendants. Our justice system was badly wounded by these two. Our taxpayers may face a huge financial liability. And there may be innocent people condemned by a process that was, by definition, unfair.

I have been outraged since this story came to light. My outrage is not solely directed at the illicit lovers but at the entire Collin County Bar, and the Judges and the Prosecutors who knew or strongly suspected that there was this unethical relationship between a judge and DA but stood by in silence as defendant after defendant was condemned by this duo.

The New York Times seems intent on fast-tracking the Texas
judiciary’s anointment as the national poster child for judges behaving
badly. A Supreme Court appeal has breathed new life into a two-decade
old scandal (this one with details a little less banal than a judge’s strict adherence to closing time) and inspired Adam Liptak’s latest legal column.

That would be the “sad and tawdry” affair, reported on by Texas Monthly
in 2008, between the judge and the prosecutor in a 1990 death penalty
case, where Charles Dean Hood was sentenced to death. The prosecutor,
Thomas S. O’Connell Jr., was a man who “never stayed the night” and
once gave his judicial paramour a chafing dish as a gift. The judge,
Verla Sue Holland, went on to the Court of Criminal Appeals, where she
served from 1996 to 2001.

Back in our cub-reporting days, we knew both Judge Verla Sue Holland
and prosecutor Tom O'Connell, both Collin County officials, and let us
stipulate for the record that we could never, ever imagine them having
sex with each other. But apparently they did.

The Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals rejected Hood's plea last year; now he's asking the
U.S. Supreme Court to rule. And a bunch of court documents have been
filed in that case. The New York Times takes a look at it today and goes completely straight-faced and understated with the quote of the day, if not the year.

It comes from Holland's deposition

In
her deposition, Judge Holland said she had lately become angry with Mr.
Hood's lawyers for "annihilating my reputation." She said she had asked
the attorney general's office to represent her in Mr. Hood's challenge
to her conduct because she thought she needed to fight back. She was
"tired of laying over," she said, and "getting licked without any
input."

Tired of "getting licked without any input"? Most dames complain about the opposite!! HEY-O!!!!!

Charles Dean Hood was sentenced to death in 1990 by a Texas
judge who had been sleeping with the prosecutor in his case. It took
Mr. Hood almost 20 years to establish that fact.

But he finally managed to force the two officials to testify about their rumored affair in the fall of 2008. They admitted it.

Sounds like a conflict of interest that would justify overturning the conviction, right?

Not so fast. Not in Texas.

Texas’s highest court for criminal matters, its Court of
Criminal Appeals, considered all of this and concluded that Mr. Hood
should be executed anyway. In a 6-to-3 decision in September, the court
told Mr. Hood that he had taken too long to raise the issue of whether
a love affair between a judge and a prosecutor amounted to a conflict
of interest.

Mr. Hood has asked the United States Supreme Court to
hear his case. On Thursday, 21 former judges and prosecutors filed a
brief supporting him. So did 30 experts in legal ethics.

Question presented: whether a conflict of interest arising out of an
affair between a judge and a prosecutor is vitiated if the affair was
lousy.

The Texas Court of Appeals ruled that a condemned man's execution should go forward even though the judge in his case was sleeping with the prosecutor. And the judge in question has an unintentionally comical rebuke, for her detractors!

Judge Verla Sue Holland has had just about enough of this Death Row
inmate, Charles Hood, "assassinating [her] reputation" (he's now
appealing to the Supreme Court) just because she sentenced him to death
after boning the man prosecuting his case. "She was 'tired of laying
over,' she said, and 'getting licked without any input.'" Judge Verla
Sue Holland demands input prior to being licked! Go, Texas!

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”
Commonly translated as “Who watches the watchmen?” is the heart of the
problem we face with in this country in regards to the rule of law. The
law, in theory, is supposed to be about balance. This is why our
version of Lady Justice is portrayed with scales and a blindfold. The
concept is that Justice does not notice who you are, it merely judges
the balance between claims.

For this to work, we must have judges and lawyers that adhere to the
ideal of legal ethics. Ethics in the law can be summed up in in terms
of loyalty; loyalty to the client, loyalty to the law and loyalty to
the profession. This is very important as our system of law and justice
has at its core the adversarial system.

This system is based on the idea that two advocates, arguing the
facts before an impartial judge and or jury will be more likely to
arrive at the truth of the matter than any other method. Given this
zero sum game (one side wins, one side looses) there needs to be that
loyalty to the law and the profession. Without it, there comes a win at
any cost mentality, and then the scales of justice get a big thumb put
on them.

Adam Liptak of the NYT has a great column about the case of Charles
Dean Hood, who was sentenced to death by a judge who was, you know, having sex with the prosecutor.
Amazingly, the Texas Supreme Court didn't think this was a big deal and
let the man's conviction stand. (This is very broadminded of them, I
feel.) The U.S. Supremes are getting ready to look at the case, and
several prosecutors and judges have filed a brief supporting the
convicted man.

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The StandDown Texas Project

The StandDown Texas Project was organized in 2000 to advocate a moratorium on executions and a state-sponsored review of Texas' application of the death penalty.
To stand down is to go off duty temporarily, especially to review safety procedures.

Steve Hall

Project Director Steve Hall was chief of staff to the Attorney General of Texas from 1983-1991; he was an administrator of the Texas Resource Center from 1993-1995. He has worked for the U.S. Congress and several Texas legislators. Hall is a former journalist.